1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computing systems, and particularly to systems for autonomic management of system throughput.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, work is classified into service class periods. For throughput oriented work, mapping of a customer defined velocity objective to a goal velocity is used to manage resource access in service class periods. Dynamic calculation of a goal velocity may be performed and based on a velocity objective dependent on changing workload requirements. Automatic adjusting of the resource requirements for the work towards a customer defined velocity objective may also be performed. In order to provide some perspective, a discussion of aspects of workload management and transaction management is now provided.
In a computing environment, an operating system of a computer provides workload management for processing units of work (processes, threads, etc.). Generally, the units of work are organized into classes (referred to as service classes) and are provided system resources in accordance with how well they are meeting predefined goals. For example, resources are reassigned from a donor service class to a receiver service class if the improvement in performance of the receiver class resulting from such reassignment exceeds the degradation in performance of the donor class. In short, reassignment takes place if there is a net positive effect in performance as determined by performance criteria. Workload management of this type differs from resource management performed by most operating systems. The assignment of a resource is determined not only by its effect on the work units to which the resources are reassigned, but also by its effect on the work units from which they are taken.
In this context, transaction management is a part of workload management. Transaction management provides a capability for an environment to recognize transaction or business units of work which span multiple processes and thus are processed by multiple execution instances of the operating system.
What are needed are techniques to autonomically manage work towards a system throughput oriented goal without requiring the customer to understand the internal behavior of the work. Preferably, the techniques allow the customer to define a system throughput oriented goal in an abstract manner. What are needed are solutions such as those provided herein.